CUP: Pressure Building On All Grown-Up Logano

Sprint Cup

CUP: Pressure Building On All Grown-Up Logano

Joey Logano is entering a contract year with Joe Gibbs Racing that could determine the course of his Sprint Cup future...

Jared Turner | Posted February 03, 2012 Concord, NC

Joey Logano has spent his entire Sprint Cup career with Joe Gibbs Racing but will have a new home in 2013. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

The boyish smile hasn’t abandoned him. Nor has the familiar twinkle in his eye.

Hang around Joey Logano for long enough, and both will be on prominent display sooner rather than later.

Yet this Joey is different from the Joey who burst onto the Sprint Cup scene three years ago brimming with the unbridled optimism you might expect from an 18-year-old being billed as the next big thing.

Now 21 and with three full Cup seasons under his belt, Logano no longer feels like the world-beater he did before joining NASCAR’s top series.

He’s experienced the trials and tribulations that come with competing 38 weekends out of the year against 42 of the world’s best stock-car drivers.

He’s learned how to win, but more often, how to handle losing.

He’s angered fellow competitors, worried about his future and even sought advice from a sports psychologist along the way.

In sum: Logano has grown up fast.

“Eighteen years old, you’re still a kid,” Logano said. “There’s a lot of life lessons that you have not gone through. As much as I had been thrown out into the real world from a young age, there’s still a lot of things you haven’t been through. I feel like I’ve been through a lot, especially last year, and it makes you a very strong person. Like everyone says, what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. I’ve experienced that a lot and I think it’s great. You’ve got to go through that time to enjoy the good times.”

Good times were certainly scarce for Logano during the 2011 Sprint Cup season. Coming off a solid sophomore Cup campaign that ended on a particularly promising note, Logano had every reason to believe 2011 might be his breakout season.

Instead, his confidence and his communication with veteran crew chief Greg Zipadelli broke down. Logano failed to win a race for the second straight year, finished a career-worst 24th in points and began to face questions about his future with Joe Gibbs Racing.

At the suggestion of team owner Joe Gibbs, Logano began meeting with a sports psychologist around midseason in hopes of gaining a more positive outlook.

Logano’s outlook did improve but his results never consistently did. Zipadelli left after the season to become competition director at Stewart-Haas Racing, prompting JGR to promote Nationwide crew chief Jason Ratcliff to lead Logano’s No. 20 Cup team.

Logano and Ratcliff know each other well, having won races together in Nationwide, so the combination could be stout. For Logano, who is in a contract year, anything less than a Chase berth and couple wins may not cut the mustard with JGR's top brass.

“If it wasn’t a contract year, if the pressure wasn’t there, if we didn’t have a high-profile race team, if our teammates weren’t out there bidding for a championship – then we might sit back on our heels and take it easy,” Ratcliff said. “We don’t want to do that. If we’re going to be successful, we want to go out there and take everything we can and take a really hard-nosed, high-pressure approach to being successful and not really set our expectations too low. We want our expectations to be somewhat intimidating to us. Otherwise we’re going to sell ourselves short.”

Joey Logano (Left) and new Sprint Cup crew chief Jason Ratcliff (Right) teamed up for select Nationwide Series races last year. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

When Logano entered the Cup Series in 2009, few expected the Connecticut native to be on the hot seat three years later. But since winning a rain-shortened race at New Hampshire in the summer of his rookie season, Logano hasn’t returned to victory lane.

He’s missed the Chase all three seasons while teammates Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin have been regulars in the championship field. Rumors of Logano’s possible exit from the company picked up last summer when JGR was courting free agent Carl Edwards.

Edwards eventually re-signed with Roush Fenway Racing, protecting Logano’s seat for the immediate future, but the experience of not knowing exactly where he stood took its toll.

"Positive thinking is very important, no matter what’s going on," Logano said. "And that’s something I learned more last year than I ever thought. I went to a sports psychologist. When you talk to those people you find a new way of going to the race track and a whole new way of thinking about a lot of things. And that’s very, very important. I was able to see some of the gains that you can make through that stuff. When you’re down, you’ll look at anything, and I think that was some really good things to look at."

Logano was initially skeptical about taking the psychologist route, but changed his tune.

“I was against it at first,” he said. “I said, ‘I don’t need strength. I’m good.’ But it’s not that. It’s confidence. It’s not like you’re screwed up in the head, it’s not like you’re a weirdo. I think it’s good for anybody. I have a whole new outlook on the whole thing. I’d recommend it to anybody. I think it’s a very smart move.”

But a fresh perspective alone won’t be enough to keep Logano at Joe Gibbs Racing in 2013.

“At the end of the day you’ve got to go, you’ve got to perform,” said team president J.D. Gibbs. “We struggled last year but I think him having Jason there in his corner is real valuable, and having those crew chiefs all working together. So we really feel like big things are in store for Joey for 2012.”

Logano hears the message loud and clear.

“Wasn’t it time to go last year?” he quipped with a hint of sarcasm. “That means exactly what it says. What am I going to say? I don’t argue with that. In my eyes, we should have went three years ago. I know the potential’s there. I know I have it in me. I know my team’s got it in them. So no excuses. We’re going for it.”

Jared Turner is an Associate Editor for SPEED.com, covering NASCAR and Formula One, and is an Editor for TruckSeries.com. His professional motorsports writing career began in 2005.